Shooting in Wrigley Field.

On Thursday, May 24th, I was an extra on set for "a football movie with Dennis Q uaid in it". I don't want to reprint the title here as that's searchable by Google and Yahoo and I don't want the production staff to come back here and see these pics. So, you'll have to do a little work on IMDB to see what movie I'm talking about here.

Technically, the movie isn't about Mr. Q uaid's character. He plays the coach of the college football team that subject of the movie played on. The movie is actually about a guy named Ern ie Dav is. He played for Syracuse in the 60's and was the first black football player to win the Heisman trophy. After that, he was picked up by the Cleveland Browns but got leukemia and died before he ever played a game with the team. Which is just sad enough of a story that a movie clearly needed to be made about it.


The actual Ern ie Dav is.

The shoot in Wrigley Field on a nice summer night, was actually my second day on the set.

A week earlier, I was called to Evanston at 5AM to be an extra in the same movie. By sheer dumb luck, they drafted me onsite to be a football player in the shoot. I readily agreed, because I knew that it was a football movie and that football players were going to get more face time than the "regular, background extras".

One thing that I've learned about being an extra is that it's all a case of "right place, right time." Sheer dumb luck propels you forward from the line of "anonymous faces in the crowd" to "guy who is really close to the camera" getting what the other extras called "major face time".

In Evanston, it was sheer dumb luck that I chose an orange helmet and not a white one. As it turned out, the orange helmet was for Syracuse, the team that the Mr. Davis played for. The white helmets were for Texas, the team that we were playing against. If I'd happened to choose the white helmet, I would've been on the OTHER side of the football field, entirely and a million miles away from the nearest movie camera.

I grabbed my bag full of football gear and headed over to the chow tent to suit up. This is what I looked like in my football uniform.



There I am. Number 25 for Syracuse. The world's fattest quarterback.

Interesting bit of trivia about that, one of the sub-coaches had a clipboard with a replica of the actual Syracuse roster on it. We looked up #25 and here's what it told us about him. His name was actually Samuel Clollelo. He was 5'9" and weighed 178 lbs. He was 19 years old at the time of the 1960 Cotton bowl and actually played in the game, itself.
This little bit of information was a source of constant merriment on the sidelines.

"When you gettin' in that game, QB?"

"Looks like you put on a few pounds in the off season."

"Clear room for the QB. Quarterback coming through!"

and

"178 lbs? I forgot to mention that I ate a dog before the game today."

(That last one was my own little joke.)

All in all, it was a fine day to spend outside. The wind was up and that kept everything pretty cool. We were constantly given water to drink and sunscreen to wear. By the end of the day, I only had a little bit of a rosey tint on my neck and face. Other guys were fried to a crisp. That's what you get for not wearing the sunscreen.

At the end of the day, we were all surprised when the director of the movie and the two lead actors showed up to shoot some stuff. Instantly we got bumped up from Second Unit to First Unit.
The shot was supposed to be the end of the game when the two teams pass by each other, saying "good game" and so forth. Two bad guys on the other team stop Davis and grudgingly admit that he played a good game. When you see that scene in the movie, look for me to pass right by the action, as they're having it out. I got some "major face time" at the end of that day.



MORE TO COME...